Like the stuff your parents used to make—but better.

Welcome to Cooking Without Recipes, in which we teach you how to make a dish we love, but don’t worry too much about the nitty-gritty details of the recipe, so you can create your own spin. This is associate editor Amiel Stanek's naughty-delicious onion dip.

So you invited some people over. You’re not serving them dinner or anything, just cocktails, wine, beer, whatever. You want to serve something homemade to snack on, but you're not going to leaf through Martha Stewart’s Appetizers or anything like that. Well, I’ve got two words for you: Onion. Dip.

Yes, like the stuff your parents made by stirring a packet of Lipton onion soup mix into a tub of sour cream. But better.

I know what you’re thinking: “Doesn’t BA already have, like, 11 recipes for onion dip already??” Having not actually counted, I cannot tell you for sure. But, yeah, we’ve got some. And the reason we need one more is because a) mine requires only 5 ingredients and b) it tastes like it was made with a ton of MSG (in a good way!)

Here’s how to do it:

Alex Lau

Get a cast iron skillet pretty hot over medium-high heat, then pour in a few glugs of olive oil and dump in 3 sliced onions. Give them a quick toss, but then leave them alone for a few minutes until they start to take on color. Once they do, you’re going to want to keep stirring them—still over medium-high heat—regularly so everything is just on this side of scary burn-y. The goal is to frymelize the onions, and although “frymelizing” is clearly a word that I made up, it pretty effectively describes what I’m talking about. Basically, you want to caramelize onions over what most people would say is “too high heat” in an effort to produce the sweetness of low-and-slow onions with the funky bite of burger shack-style griddle-fried onions.

When all the onions are starting to get aggressively browned and the whole thing feels like it’s about to go off the rails, deglaze the pan with a generous pour (3 tablespoons or so) of fish sauce and then drop the heat to low. Let them simmer for another 10 to 15 minutes—you want them good and soft, but not onion jam-soft.

(Mom: If you’re reading this, yes you can substitute yogurt for the sour cream, but please use full fat and not the gross nonfat kind that tastes like chemicals. I love you.)

When the onions are fully frymelized, let them cool for a few minutes before transferring them to a cutting board and giving them a healthy chop. Stir all that onion-y mess into your sour cream business, season with salt, and boom: You’ve got onion dip.

Serve with potato chips (obvs) and tell all of your guests about how frymelizing changed your life.